TCS not hit by US subprime crisis: Ramadorai

Bangalore: Country’s top IT firm Tata Consultancy Services has not witnessed any impact of the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, which accounts for 50% of its overseas business.

“Though some of our clients are affected, they have not reduced their work (IT outsourcing) with us. We just have to watch the situation," company’s Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director S Ramadorai told reporters here yesterday.

“The US is going through a budgeting cycle now. So, the implications of that will be known only in the new year. We have no answers as yet. It is not possible for me to predict anything at this point of time," he said.

He said “even in a downturn, if the cost reduction is going to be the a primary thing, it is always good for us as we will get more work."

Some of the financial institutions, Ramadorai said, were facing implications of the subprime crisis. “Even those clients who are in financial services are spread over multiple geographies," he added.

“We don’t work for a single client out of the US. We have similar clients in Europe and other parts, Southern Asia and Asia-Pacific region," he said, adding that “our revenue from the US market is about 50% as we have spread our business in other countries".

To a query on the domestic IT sector, he said “attrition rates are coming down and it signifies maturity (of the IT industry). The availability of talent pool is also increasing and the demand-supply situation is getting better".

Ramadorai said that at the same time there is a need to broad-base the resource pool for which there has to be a “change in the mindset on educational reforms".

“It is absolutely necessary to give choice to the students. What are the best ways to decide what is good for them. Second, with digitization of education system itself, how to make sure that happens. Third is, how to increase the number of doctoral students. PhDs are a must if you want to go up the value chain," he said.

Companies like TCS were hiring not only engineers but also other graduates and “doing transformation programme like Ignite, where we take BSc graduates and train them over a seven-month period into software professionals that releases a number of engineers for others (companies)," Ramadorai said.

“The total number of (available) engineering graduates today is three million which itself will give a lot of talent pool," he said.